Janet Taliaferro: Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer & Activist

Sheila O’Connor, Brooklyn born and convent educated, leaves the East Coast for her freshman year at college at Southern Methodist University. Her three suite mates are familiar with what is an alien world to her. But Sheila has her own secrets, which will affect all of them before the year is out and continue to echo even when the women meet for a 13th reunion.

Janet Taliaferro: Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer & Activist

For women like me, who came to maturity before the 1960s, the specter of illegal and unsafe abortion is as much of a horror as the reaction of those who view a terminated pregnancy as murder. In those days there was no “pill” and the only means of obtaining a contraceptive device was through a doctor—with the exception of condoms…

In reality, abortion has been with us as long as pregnancy and will be with us whether the anti-abortion forces are successful or not. Better, I believe, as President Clinton said, to have abortion be “safe, legal and rare…” Read more

About Janet

I write novels, poetry, and short stories. In broad-brush terms, I have written about alcohol and drug addiction, and more importantly, recovery and the influence of twelve-step programs, incest, racial and religious tolerance, abortion, and war.

In previous lives, I was a political activist and business owner and have remained an avid Planned Parenthood supporter over the years. I graduated from Southern Methodist University and hold a Master’s Degree in Creative Studies from the University of Central Oklahoma, where I received the Geoffrey Bocca Memorial Award for graduate writing.